The availability of fresh ingredients is very limited where I am, and I’d like to plan a little garden around Korean vegetables/herbs. What would you want fresh veggie-wise? Garlic, radishes, sweet potatoes, onions . . . help?

Thanks!

(Also, if there’s a seed company or something that sends things to the US, that’d be great. Thanks!)

They have a nice variety of asian seeds available. I’ve never ordered from them, but they claim to be a Yahoo! store, so they should be legit.

The other option is to go to your nearest Home Depot or Lowe’s and ask if they can order any asian herbs for you.

If I could grow a garden, I’d love to try oriental cucumbers and hot peppers. Oriental cucumbers are so much crunchier than English ones. And hot pepper plants are so pretty. I love having them around. But I live in an apartment, so it’s container gardening for me… Right now, we’ve grown grape tomatoes and I just picked up a pack of green onion seeds. I’ve also grown chives, but not from seed.

I’ve ordered from Evergreen Seeds and everything I planted did bloom. I even managed to harvest a good supply of royal crown daisy/edible chrysanthemum for soups…which is great since I love eating it and can only get to an Asian market once a month. The other plant I grew was the Korean mild pepper, which I also managed to harvest. Pretty good yield, even though I’m not much of a gardener. I bought some others seeds as well, but as I was limited to containers at the time, I didn’t plant them.

When my mother was gardening at our old house, she would plant the following:

1. Asian cucumbers

2. Hot and mild pepper plants

3. What she calls sesame leaves but I think the given name is perilla.

4. Korean watercress (she had hers growing in a kiddie pool since they requires LOTS of water)

5. Korean radish

6. Korean cabbage

I’d throw in some edible crown daisy/chrys. They’re used in a lot of spicy stews, and what you don’t use will go to flower so think of it as an edible AND ornamental. Evergreen has several varieties of plants to choose from, so they should accomodate various growing regions. We are “lucky” enough to live in the deep southern regions of Georgia, so we got lucky with some of the items which can’t take a frost. One day I’d love to try my hand at Korean melon, but this year I was too lazy. I do have a nice kalamansi (filipino citrus) growing on my front porch though.

Cilantro, perilla leaves are very easy to grow. Also chives (both european and asian). I coulnd’t imagine hot peppers being very hard either.

With perilla keep in mind that it will take a very long time to sprout, but as soon as it does it grows very rapidly. You will want to pick the very young leaves, because in my experience the plant gets tougher and more bitter when maturing. So the enormous perilla leaves, you will probably want to buy in the store. Perilla plant also gives ddeulkkae seeds (and cilantro gives coriander seeds which can be used as a spice in things like indian cuisine, etc.)

Most greens won’t be very hard to grow either. I planted ‘mustard spinach’ once and it was almost like a weed, overtaking my garden ! I think the crysanthemum is a very good idea. Perhaps they sell minari on that site as well.

If you want to grow fruits, consider raspberries. It will take a couple of years before the plant is mature, but when it is you have delicious fruit. It is a climbing plant, so grow it against your fence or something. Also strawberries are of course a classic; just be careful not to let the snails eat them.

Blackberries can also be grown, but are better picked in the wild for they are ubiquitous anyway (here in europe we have to look for them, but in America they should be everywhere simply because there’s more nature).

Currently I have Chinese Leeks, Chinese Pea Pods, all varieties of radishes, carrots, Burdock, Mugwort, Bush Beans, Edible Mums, Zukes, Dwarf Peas, Mustard, Turnips, Beets, Chinese Chives, Mustard, tomatoes, potatoes and all varieties of herbs growing. The only disappointment is the Perilla Leaves that never came up this year. :)